Heroes of the Storm PTR Patch Notes – July 30, 2018

Blizzard Entertainment
2018-7-30

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting until August 6. As always, if you encounter any bugs during your PTR play sessions, please stop by the PTR Bug Report forum to let us know about your experiences.

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General

Reduced the amount of bandwidth required to transfer gameplay information between the client and server.

Reduced the size of replay files.

New Hero: Whitemane

As the High Inquisitor of the Scarlet Crusade, Sally Whitemane zealously leads her champions in a never-ending war against the undead. Under her guiding Light, all who have been touched by the plague of death will be purged by her cleansing flame… no matter how much they protest.

Trait

Zeal

Whitemane’s Healing abilities apply Zeal for 8 seconds.

Allies with Zeal are healed for 100% of the damage Whitemane deals to Heroes.

If an enemy Hero is hit by Dragon’s Breath, lower the cooldown by 2 seconds and refund the Mana cost

Chrono Sickness (E)

Slow amount reduced from 50 to 35%

Level 11

Time Out (Active)

Duration reduced from 7 to 5 seconds

Level 14

Fast Forward (Q)

Range requirement reduced from 75 to 70%

Quantum Overdrive (Active)

Ability Power bonus increased from 20 to 25%

Developer Comment: We’re making a few changes to Chromie to reduce the frustration when playing against her and to reduce her wide power variance between games. A number of these changes are designed to increase counter-play when playing against Chromie, like reducing her range on her abilities and letting enemies see Dragon’s Breath shortly after it has been cast. In exchange, Chromie’s Sand Blast has a shorter cast time, and she will now have a modified version of Bronze Talons baseline, where she can weave in auto-attacks for hitting enemy Heroes with her abilities. The reason we decided to give her the additional Bronze Talons trait is so that Chromie players are encouraged to interact more with their opponents. We’re rewarding them for getting into more dangerous positions with the possibility of increased damage output. This also lets us redistribute her damage away from her high burst, long range abilities, and more into something her opponents have a better opportunity to play around. We like Chromie’s unique place in our game as a long-range, artillery mage that requires enemies to pay attention to their positioning but over time we found that she simply had too much range and burst for players to feel like they had an engaging experience when playing against her. While we’ve had a blast with these changes, we’ll continue to keep an eye on her going forward and are prepared to make additional tweaks as needed.

After colliding with terrain, enemy Heroes are slowed by 50% for 4 seconds

Top Off (Q)

Moved from Level 4

Bonus healing reduced from 50% to 30%

Adjusted Functionality:

Increased healing is now applied to all targets that have Healing Pathogen

Developer Comment: In the same vein as our earlier changes to Kael’thas, we felt that Stukov could use some love in the talent diversity department. We’ve made a number of functionality changes that should open up new builds and play styles, particularly in his earlier talent tiers.